[Server-devel] Drupal on OLPC? (Martin Langhoff)

Martin Langhoff martin.langhoff at gmail.com
Wed Mar 19 07:53:20 EDT 2008


2008/3/17 Carol Lerche <cafl at msbit.com>:
> I have looked on the wiki and find no mention of how moodle and mediawiki
> are to be used on the school server.  Since my need is in providing an
> in-class "website" for young children, I find drupal much closer to
> providing what I think is needed than either moodle or mediawiki.  Perhaps
> my inspection of the moodle website has not adequately found the optional
> modules or customization that would allow what I need.  It appears far more
> suitable as a tool for older kids and teachers.  But a wiki is certainly not

Moodle has a lot of k-12 users, there's even a k-12 forum. Moodle is
in part a CMS, you can picture it as a CMS where all bits of content
(and interactivity - forums, etc) is marked as belonging to a course.
You can, of course, have many courses - each with its content and
activities.

> what I need.  My use cases map to a content management system such as Drupal
> much better.  Specifically, I want to have an album made by the kids where
> they can upload their photos from "record".

A gallery can be achieved using the "glossary" module or the
"database" module (but this requires a bit of configuration) if you
are keen on trying. But if Drupal is working for you, that's fine too.

> readers.  I have various documents aimed at teachers and administrators
> which could presumably also work in moodle, but could be made more
> attractive in a system like Drupal I belive.

Moodle can be made very cute ... at least I look it and find it
attractive, after 4 years of living with it ;-)

What are those documents? It sounds like you are doing very
interesting work -- could be related to what the k-12 crowd in
Moodle.org are doing - lots of discussion here
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=731 - no need to actually
register, use the "login as guest" button.

> Now, Martin may have a perfect counterexample to this (mis)understanding of
> mine, and if so, please point to it.  Otherwise, it seems like some use case
> gathering is needed before making a decision that moodle and mediawiki cover
> all bases.

I do think Moodle i very strong in all course or student-group content
and activity mgmt, and getting better all the time. It's patchy in the
"general content for everyone", where MediaWiki shines, and we will
also have MW there to host partial Wikipedia content.

There has to be a strong case for a 3rd system that overlaps so much
with those 2 -- each additional system is a significant burden, as we
will have to customise it quite a bit.

Having said that, I _like_ Drupal, and it can be used usefully, but we
are entering diminishing returns region (from a core OLPC team POV),
so if the Drupal community can help get this in shape, that would be
great. IOWs it won't be a priority for me.

cheers,



m


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